Is there anything more fake than a Congressional hearing?

It's almost like a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court is a reward for the degradation of having to pretend that Beverley Leslie Jeff Sessions is worthy of having his "questions" answered.

I wish I could take credit for the Beverley Leslie comparison. In today's edition of What Driftglass Said:

Alabama Republican Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III Was on a roll today.

He didn't quite get around to whining about interposition and nullification, but as Rachel Maddow pointed out, Little Jeff made quite the cottage industry of trying to figure out how many syllables he could add to the word "Socialist" to make it sound extra scary.

Also -- with a straight face -- the Party of "Bush v. Gore" and "Citizens United" thought it would be a genius move to spend most of the day tarring the late justice Thurgood Marshall with the evil "activism" brush: the man who won Brown v. Board of Education, went on to serve with great distinction as this nation's first African American Supreme Court justice, and for whom Elena Kagan once clerked and spoke admiringly.

Because when your Base has the IQ of Boo Radley, the temperament of Veruca Salt and the memory of Leonard from "Memento"

("Bush who?") it really doesn't matter what kind of gibberish you spout or how incoherent it is. As long as you conjure up an imaginary hippie or uppity Negro to explain every problem and punch him in the face to solve that problem, you're fucking golden with the Pig People.

Driftglass has video of Sessions and his business associate Benjy.

Spelling Error

Didn't I see some English tabloid with the following headline when the World Cup groups were announced?

England
Algeria
Slovenia
Yanks

Get it? E-A-S-Y.

Last time I checked, the standings were as follows:

Yanks
England
Slovenia
Algeria

That spells: Y-E-S, A-merica! U-S-A! U-S-A!

Ratfuckers in the Midst

Driftglass reminds us that today's conservatives are "vicious children" (perfect) who:

Have never known a time when smirking in blood-drunk delight at doing things that they believe will irritate and enrage the the imaginary Dirty Fucking Hippie that hides under their bed -- even what the actual outcomes of their filthy, little machinations result in one ecological, economic, constitutional, and foreign policy catastrophe after another -- was not the absolute core of the Modern Conservative Movement.

Read.

Dear Mr. President:

I understand that you are a graduate of Columbia and Harvard. Effective immediately, I ask that you:

- Stop using the word "folks".

- Start pronouncing the g in words ending in g. Some of us still recognize phoniness and pandering to redneck fucktards when we see/hear it, and that is what you are doing when you drop the g at the end of words. It will not make them hate you any less. It doesn't make you seem "folks"-y - it only makes you look stupid. Clinton could get away with it because he was from Arkansas. But you? Stop it. Right now. It's insulting to those of us with brains. We didn't believe Dubya when he did it, and we certainly don't believe you when you do it. I know that intelligence is a bad thing here in 2010 'murca, but please do what you can to reverse that trend.

Sincerely,

A Concerned Citizen

Look How Evil Israel Is!

Via Mr. Sullivan, this pic of the Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade:

photo by By Marco Longari/AFP/Getty Images.

Did you get that?

The Tel Aviv Pride Parade.

The Tel Aviv Fucking Pride Parade.

In Israel. In the midst of crazed Muslims trying to destroy the tiny nation of Israel - the only country in the depraved Middle East that is advanced enough to find a way to reconcile its ancient biblical bullshit with the realities of modern existence.

Anyone got any shots of the Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh, Tehran, or Karachi parades?

What about Baghdad? Didn't thousands of U.S. soldiers die so that we could bring "freedom" and "democracy" to Iraq?

Here's my primitive, incomplete calculus:

Is Israel perfect?

No.

Should the U.S. unconditionally support any and every Israeli government as it does whatever it wants?

No.

Should we do what we can (maybe not as much and as unconditionally?) to preserve the one vestige of modernity* and civilization in the Middle East?

Absolutely.

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* - Yeah, I know many Arab states have skyscrapers and the best airlines. Wevs. The skyscrapers were built by slave labor (not that our government buildings weren't), and let me know how life goes once you get off your Emirates flight.

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In closing, Shabbat shalom to everyone in and at the Tel Aviv pride parade! I hope to join you there one day.

Vocal Adrenaline . . .

are evil!

Just getting caught up on Glee via Hulu. (Yes, another wild Friday night on the A list here.)

Puck's parting shot "See you punks at regionals" made my heart sing. Perfect. (Loved New Directions' Soul Train Line as well.)

Matterhorn

Here's author Karl Marlantes talking about his magnificent book, Matterhorn.



I just finished it yesterday. It is so profoundly moving - I can't find the right words for it. (Click here for excerpts from more capable reviews.) The only bad thing about a wonderful book is that you eventually finish it. I think I kind of fell in love with the characters - and now I am missing them, hoping that the survivors continue to survive the remainder of the time in Vietnam.